


More From Denethor's notebooks

by HASA_Archivist



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Poetry, War of the Ring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2003-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-23 13:26:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3770072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HASA_Archivist/pseuds/HASA_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Occasionally, when I'm depressed enough, Denethor and I collaborate on poetry.  Yes, that's the best way to describe it.  So, here are some that the Steward of Gondor and I came up with as we took our guided tour through hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Diving Down Into Hell

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the HASA Transition Team: This story was originally archived at [HASA](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Henneth_Ann%C3%BBn_Story_Archive), which closed in February 2015. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in February 2015. We posted announcements about the move, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this author, please contact The HASA Transition Team using the e-mail address on the [HASA collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/hasa/profile).

Diving down into hell

Feeling the flames burn within me

Captured in the depths of despair

Hope a distant memory of happier days

Fighting to breathe that cooler air

To draw that soothing blue-green calm within myself

Drown within that patience which knows not the stone or the flame.

  
Do I get the choice to hope?  
  
Within me there lies the awareness  
  
That I have far too much  
  
For hope to come easily.  
  
Too much knowledge for faith to take root  
  
Too much fatalism for defiance to drive me onward  
  
Too much stubbornness for surrender to come easily.  
  


  
Yet despair cannot fully triumph,  
  
Cannot drag me down to her dry sunken gardens  
  
If hope is not mine  
  
I may still watch such small pleasures of the soul  
  
As remain to me.  
  
And if I eat of the dust of despair  
  
Yet the tears I cry shall wash my face  
  
In place of the cooling rain of hope  
  


  
I choose to dive into hell  
  
To seek out its uttermost depths.  
  
For in that blackness shall I find light.  
  


  
13 JAN 2003  



	2. Diving Into Hell II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Occasionally, when I'm depressed enough, Denethor and I collaborate on poetry. Yes, that's the best way to describe it. So, here are some that the Steward of Gondor and I came up with as we took our guided tour through hell.

Sometimes the dive into hell is necessary

For in the depths of the darkness

In the brightness of the flames

Truth can be reflected back at you

The dark truths that you do not acknowledge in the light

The dim unrecognisable depths of yourself

The parts of who you are

That you dare not recognise

  
Sometimes the dive into hell is voluntary  
  
Something done in search of knowledge  
  
The necessary sacrifice to gain wisdom  
  
Or truth  
  
Or redemption  
  


  
Sometimes the dive into hell simply cannot be avoided  
  
The pit yawns before you  
  
And the only choice is to jump  
  
Or to dive  
  
At least in diving  
  
You face the demons head on  
  
Face them and face them down  
  


  
At no time is the dive into hell without pain  
  
The devil must have his due  
  
After all.  
  


  
14 JAN 2003  


  



End file.
